DESIGNED CONFLICT?

The renewed violence along the Thailand-Cambodia border is a stark reminder that peace agreements are often less decisive than the domestic politics that surround them.

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Barely weeks after a US-brokered deal was signed on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting in Malaysia, hostilities resumed on December 7, killing more than 20 people and forcing nearly half a million civilians to flee border regions on both sides. The rapid unravelling of diplomacy has little to do with sudden changes on the ground and far more to do with political calculations in Bangkok and Phnom Penh. Border disputes between the two countries have flared periodically for decades, especially around poorly demarcated stretches near the ancient Preah Vihear temple complex. But what makes this episode particularly troubling is its timing: violence returned not after years of stalemate, but almost immediately after a celebrated peace deal. This suggests that the agreement was never anchored in a durable political consensus, but merely papered over deeper nationalist pressures that neither side was prepared to confront.